(Posted in Technical Assistance by mistake )

When I go to lfs world and dbl click Racers and Hosts Online I get "A page-load time out occurred" Everything else works fine. Any ideas or is it a problem with lfs's end? I've cleared cache/cookies, tried it in IE as well (currently use firefox) and it doesn't work.

Any ideas? Victor?

I have the same problem.

no idea what it can be, but orion hinted that maybe you have some (ad)blocks in place or some filter, that filters content based on (bad)words - maybe some word in the hostlist matches the filter settings?

Otherwise I wouldn't know what it could be atm

Which kind of connection do you guys have? One problem with the current design of LFS World is that is is very heavy on bandwidth (can take minutes to open on a dial up modem in some areas). Maybe it takes so long to open, you end up with a time-out? But if you are on a good broadband connection then I would be surprised.

P.S. This may be no explanation at all, so it's just a question what kind of connection do you have.

The content for the hosts page is just around 50KB, which shouldnt be a problem to transfer in 15 seconds, even on 56k Modem.
Gzip makes it possible, compressing 700+ KB to just 50

If you can load the background image (114KB at 1280x1024), everything else should be downloaded within 15 seconds either.

Vic: is it possible to somehow make a browser reject all gzip http headers, even if it's supported? If yes, this could be the problem too, even though it shouldnt show up when you use some different browsers.

Seeing as you're here Orion, I'll just mention the thing that I noticed taking minutes, when I was using a 56k modem (running at less than 56k due to poor phone lines in Ireland).

It was simply, the LFS World startup, without even clicking on anything. That is very heavy and takes minutes. You might as well click LFS World (or type the address) then go and make a cup of coffee while it loads up. Also, when I was using an actual broadband ADSL connection in Devon (with good download speed but I don't know about the ping) the initial load was slow as well. Not minutes in this case, but long enough to make you say "come on... come on..." impatiently, when you just expect things to come up fast when you are on broadband, and you don't want to wait around.

On my connection here at home it comes up fast - about 3 seconds. Anyway I haven't seen many people complaining about speed. Anyway I have those two test cases available if you want me to get my relations to do a speed test any time.

Ever tried Firefox?

I'd say the main problem of the current lfsw is the huge amount of small images. All the icons, border images, small icons, etc. They have to be loaded, and many small objects make a website really slow. If you have one 1MB image, this will load way faster then 100 1KB images. Every HTTP request slows things down, and increases server CPU load.
One big problem of the IE is, that it can only handle one request at a time, while Firefox supports some decent http.proxy.pipeilining, allowing to load many files at once
You could make a test with the ZT gallery (look at my sig), which consists of 300+ thumbnails, I bet FF (with the correct settings) will load 10 times faster than IE :P

When those images are in the cache, lfsw will load already a lot faster, but I guess the browser still checks for new versions of the images in the preloading script. Maybe vic can try to disable this for testing (not in general, just using a query string var, like ?nopreload=true).

Am on 1.5 meg dsl, the other items don't take long to load at all.

thought i should add my name to this thread too, ive ben getting the time out error for a while now but i always thought it was due to the heavy usage of the lfs server but it appears every single time now. Ive now found out it was the firewall blocking me. Any ideas why the firewall would block when trying to load up the hosts and online racers screen? rest works fine. I am not running any other filters for bad words etc, Ad blcoking is on but it shouldnt effect it.. or shoul dit?. It use to work fine before.

I am on a 8mb down and 512kbs up connection so loading isnt a problem....

mad

I've been experiencing this for quite some time, but it's rare enough that it doesn't bother me. It seems to me more like a problem with a database or something. E.g. I click 2-3 times in a row on Bl gp XRR charts and it times out every time. Then I click on FZR, loads fine, FXR fine, then again XRR - times out. Like there's something on that particular page that's causing it. It's not related to track/car combos either, sometimes it can be a specific page for a certain combo, MHR or nutter rank. Like page 3 for some chart times out, and all others for the same chart don't. It rarely happens though, like a few times a month. I use FF too.

I had the problem with `Racers and Hosts` until I did away with Norton Firewall. Now it opens up instantly when I click it, I'm guessing Norton was slowing down the data from getting to firefox. Racers and Hosts worked with me as long as I had the filters set so it didn't have to load too many hosts in one go.

Keiran

Quote from AutoPilot :

I've been experiencing this for quite some time, but it's rare enough that it doesn't bother me. It seems to me more like a problem with a database or something. E.g. I click 2-3 times in a row on Bl gp XRR charts and it times out every time. Then I click on FZR, loads fine, FXR fine, then again XRR - times out. Like there's something on that particular page that's causing it. It's not related to track/car combos either, sometimes it can be a specific page for a certain combo, MHR or nutter rank. Like page 3 for some chart times out, and all others for the same chart don't. It rarely happens though, like a few times a month. I use FF too.

I would bet that is caused by some firewall or another crap program. Actually all Norton programs should be forbidden - they suck

Quote from ORION :

Actually all Norton programs should be forbidden - they suck

amen!

Specially it's funny to see ppl using 10 firewalls and various other security programs, but browsing the web with IE... LOL

Just like buying a huge alarm system for your house but keeping the door open

Quote from ORION :

I would bet that is caused by some firewall or another crap program. Actually all Norton programs should be forbidden - they suck

Unlikely. I use XP's firewall with just about every program I have put in the exceptions list. And if you read my case, it can't really be the firewall. The same information goes from my PC in both cases (e.g. XRR and FZR charts), just the argument for the server script is different, and only one works. Xp's and almost all other firewalls don't inspect the data payload which is the only thing I can see that will be different, so no firewall should be blocking anything.

And I don't have crap programs installed. Norton included

hm thats werid. Could you post an example link that isnt working for you? SO we can test who can open it and who cant.